The check-in counters opened around 3 hours before departure. We were the first first class passangers to check-in. We were promptly checked in with our bags tagged only to Dubai per our request. At this point, there were no questions from the check-in agent on our unorthodox routing.

After clearing immigration, we headed next to the Araliya lounge that Emirates uses in Colombo. Our first impressions weren’t good. The lounge was pretty crowded since it’s used by Thai and Singapore as well but it did empty out once those flights left. The leather chairs seem to be from the 90s. There was a decent selection of hot food but it didn’t look too appetizing. Might as well just wait for the first class meals later. The lounge does however have a shower that allowed us to refresh after a long day in Colombo. The internet connection was also pretty decent.

We headed to the departure gate a couple of minutes before boarding since we were falling asleep in the lounge and needed a walk. The agent who took our boarding passes gave us weird and evil stares, handed us our additional boarding passes for our Dubai to Male flight. We spent only a couple of minutes in the departure gate before boarding was called for families with children and first and business class passengers. We were happy to see that they were no boarding gate chaos in Colombo.

The flight we were on came from Singapore on the Singapore-Colombo-Dubai route. They were already a couple of first class passengers which started off from Singapore. No private first class cabin for us today. We later found out that there was another guy on the flight doing the same CMB-MLE run. We still had another 20 minutes before departure and quickly requested to the Dom to be flowing. Before departure, a ground staff which we assume to be station manager came on board, said hi, asked if we got our connecting boarding passes and finally had to ask why we would fly the long way to Male. Instead of giving the real reason, we just told him we had business to take care of in Dubai.

The flight was operated by a 777-300ER with the “standard” first class seats instead of the private suites. It was adequate for the 4 hour flight to Dubai. Meals were usually served about an hour before arrival but we requested for our meals to be served as soon as possible since we were getting pretty hungry and wanted to catch as long of a nap before arrival. Shortly after we finished our meals, we fell asleep and woke up 20 minutes before we were expected to land. We didn’t take too many photos of this flight since the lighting wasn’t too good being a night flight.